And which business majors are these?? Most of my business major friends ended up making less than me after graduation. Granted, if they do well and work their way up, they'll be passing me in 5-10 years. Although, they'll definitely be working 50% more hours than me for that extra $$$. It's not all about the money...

 

[QUOTE=corey415,Nov 14 2006, 11:24 AM] Do those highly compensated business major types work a 40 hour work week?

 

Well, I say this all the time...

I like computers I really do. I love technology. I love new technology.

My passion is cars. I love everything about cars. I love learning about them, driving them, looking at them, Everything.

Problem is, I dont want to be a mechanic or a car salesman for the rest of my life and I dont know what field or job combines the two things Im interested in.

The optimal thing for me would be to be working with new technology in cars I guess. I dont know what the hell that field is though. People have told me "Mechanical eng" but I dont want to be a damn Midas manager.

What kind of fields should I get into??

Thanks for all the replies/advice so far...

Im not going to ask how much you all make, Im going to ask if its feasible to be making $10k per month on the east coast doing what Im interested in???

-Dustin

 

its feasible to make $10k per month eventually.. when you have a lot of experience. Generally, engineers don't make too much and the salary ceiling is pretty stern.

 

Cars are designed by both mechanical and electrical/computer engineers. The latter is taking on a greater responsibility in the design as cars become more high tech with electronic fuel injection, drive by wire, self parking systems, hundreds of sensors, computers, night vision, etc. Mechanical engineers design everything else

 

As a computer engineering graduate, I agree with *most* of what's been said here.

If you want to design processors and hate math, I think you might be out of luck. CE and EE degrees are full of math. Perhaps you want to do something else though.. I'm sure there are many roles that come into play in launching a processor, you might be able to find something that isn't engineering and then try to get into the right company (Intel/Amd/Motorola/TI)

I think I have to disagree that engineering pays poorly. The entry level salary for the disciplines being discussed comes in above the average household income in the U.S. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/income.html) I am going to assume what vtec9 meant is that to stay strictly an engineer will (for most) guarantee your income will never put you in the upper crust. You can make decent money as an engineer, but engineering alone probably won't make you rich (unless you are your own boss).

I think for most of us, if you want to make a decent amount of cash its going to take time unless you get lucky, have the right personal connections, or are incredibly business savvy. If you were to look strictly at engineers, yes the ceiling would be pretty limited. If you are in engineering though, unless you refuse to do anything else you probably should be aspiring to do something more eventually, such as Architect, then maybe Director, etc. Basically moving more to the business side of things over time.

My disclaimer is that these are my own general observations. I'm sure anyone could come up with a case study contradicting what I have seen above

 

As an engineer with both a CE degree and an EE degree , I agree with what jds62f said above. If you don't like math, engineering is probably another, as you stated it, $50k mistake. Also, I think all engineers and engineers-to-be want to develop brand new, high-tech, next-gen technology, but realistically its hard to get a job at one of the top high-tech companies (intel, ibm, northrup grumman, xilinx etc) and if you do, you will be one of many engineers working on small parts of a single project, meaning you wont get as much hands-on as you probably are hoping for.
Also, while the salary is pretty good starting off ($40k-$60k depending where you live), the ceiling is not too much higher ($80k - $90k for 15 + years of experience). If you want to make over $100k a year, you probably want to do some real estate, business owning, or get an MBA and become a project manager(most companies with engineers will pay for your MBA).

While I am re-iterating on points already made, I just wanted to give you the advice of another person who works in the computer engineering field.

Good luck with your decision and I hope everything works out for you!